Keturah

Keturah (קְטוּרָה, Qəṭūrā, possibly meaning "incense"; قطورة) was a wife and a concubine of the Biblical patriarch Abraham. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham married Keturah after the death of his first wife, Sarah. Abraham and Keturah had six sons. According to Jewish tradition, she was a descendant of Noah's son Japheth.

One modern commentator on the Hebrew Bible has called Keturah "the most ignored significant person in the Torah". The medieval Jewish commentator Rashi, and some previous rabbinical commentators, related a traditional belief that Keturah was the same person as Hagar, although this idea cannot be found in the biblical text. However, Hagar was Sarah's Egyptian maidservant.

Relationship with Abraham
Keturah is referred to in Genesis as "another wife" of Abraham. In First Chronicles, she is called Abraham's "concubine".

According to one opinion in the midrashic work Genesis Rabbah, Keturah and Hagar are names for the same person, whom Abraham remarried after initially expelling. This opinion was adopted and popularized by 11th-century scholar Rashi. Possible justifications for this opinion include the fact that Keturah is referred to as Abraham's concubine (in the singular), and several other verses which suggest that the descendants of Hagar and Keturah lived in the same territory or formed a single ethnic group. However, this idea was rejected by another rabbi in Genesis Rabbah, as well as by traditional commentators such as Ibn Ezra, Nahmanides, and Rashbam. The Book of Jubilees also supports the conclusion that Keturah and Hagar were two different people, by stating that Abraham waited until after Hagar's death before marrying Keturah. According to modern scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, the identification of Keturah with Hagar has "no basis ... in the text".

Genesis Rabbah interprets the name Keturah in accordance with the opinion that she was identical to Hagar: the name was said to be related to the Aramaic ketur (knot) to imply that she was "bound" and did not have sexual relations with anyone else from the time she left Abraham until her return. The name Keturah was alternatively said to be derived from the ketoret (meaning "incense" in Hebrew).

Descendants
Keturah bore Abraham six sons: Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Genesis and First Chronicles also list seven of her grandsons (Sheba, Dedan, Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah). Genesis records that Abraham gave them gifts and sent them to the East, while making Isaac son of Sarah his primary heir. Keturah's sons were said to have represented the Arab tribes who lived south and east of Israel. According to the Judean authors Josephus and Malchus, Punic people were descended from Epher.

According to the African(Igbo) writer Olaudah Equiano, the 18th-century English theologian John Gill believed the African people were descended from Abraham and Keturah. According to the Baháʼí author John Able, Baháʼís consider their founder, Bahá'u'lláh, to have been "descended doubly, from both Abraham and Sarah, and separately from Abraham and Keturah."